iPhone Photography

It’s been almost two weeks since I first got my iPhone 3Gs and I have to say that I am still very impressed with it. I was originally a bit underwhelmed with the camera on it, but as with everything with the iPhone, there’s an app for that.

I tend to use the camera on my cell phones a lot – I take a lot of pictures (usually because I think I’ll be blogging about something later) and I carry a small purse. I have two digital cameras – one big one that Kevin got me a couple of years ago for my birthday and is quite awesome and one that is quite a bit smaller and I really just have for the sake of portability. I find that in most cases, though, the small one is even kind of a pain to carry around. I do, however, always have my phone on me – “and the best camera is the one that’s with you”.

Taking photos on my old Blackberry was never an enjoyable experience – they didn’t come out great and I found it was kind of a hassle to try to upload them to my PC or even use the Flickr app to upload them to my Flickr account. The iPhone and the various apps available to it make the whole experience far less painful.

In my recent search to find the best iPhone photo apps for my everyday use, I came across Chase Jarvis’s website dedicated to iPhone photography – The Best Camera (though I’ll admit I haven’t yet gotten around to downloading the app) and I’ve been very inspired by it and all you can potentially do with just an iPhone.

I’ve recently stopped using the basic iPhone camera and have downloaded the Snapture app to take all my photos. For just $1.99, it’s totally worth it – just for the ability to zoom in up to 5x. It also adds a number of other cool features including color filters, stability control, touch to focus, and integration with your Facebook and Twitter accounts – just to name a few.

I’ve also downloaded a few free editing apps, but for the most part, I’ve really found the Photoshop.com Mobile App to be the most useful. It just does everything I need it to do – right in one spot.

So now that I’ve taken a great photo and edited it if needed, what am I going to do with it? Just let it sit on my phone? Maybe if I was still using my Blackberry… but now I have better options. I’ve been playing around with another free app called Flickit to upload my photos directly to my Flickr account. I’ve even set it up so that by default they’re all being sent right to a set called “From My iPhone”. If I want them to go to another set, that can also be done quite simply. From there (as I’m sure you already know) they can instantly be viewed right here on my “Recent Photos” Page (which can be accessed from the top of this page if you hadn’t already noticed).

So with a few simple apps, two of which are free, I can quickly take a photo, edit it and have it uploaded to my Flickr account in a matter of a couple of minutes. It’s pretty neat. I definitely hope to do a lot more experimenting with these apps and I’m sure I’ll even try out a few more. In the meantime, you should check out my Recent Photos page to see some of the pictures I’ve taken in the last couple of weeks with my iPhone.